Promoting socioemotional competence in primary school classrooms: Intervention effects of the EMOscope

The aim of the study was to determine the effectiveness of a brief, teacher-led intervention (EMOscope) developed to promote children’s socioemotional competence. Our sample consisted of 339 Polish pupils and their 16 teachers from 16 third grade classrooms. Teachers in the experimental condition (8 teachers) were trained to deliver the EMOscope intervention. Data were collected at pre-test and post-test. Performance tests were administered to measure children’s social understanding and emotional awareness. Furthermore, peer ratings were used to measure children’s cooperative behaviour and teachers’ reported on children’s prosocial behaviour, hyperactivity, emotional problems, conduct problems, and peer problems. Multilevel regression analysis revealed that children in the experimental condition improved significantly on emotional self- and other-awareness and on social understanding. Moreover, they decreased in teacher-rated hyperactivity, conduct problems, and total difficulties. No effects were found, however, on teacher-rated prosocial behaviour, emotional problems, peer problems, and peer-rated cooperative behaviour.     

Man Talk: Exploring Sexual Communication Between Fathers and Sons in a Minority South African Community

Sex Roles - Much of what is known about father-child sexual communication is based on studies conducted in North America and more research into under-represented groups is needed. Our exploratory...     

Measuring Anxiety and Depression in Ghanaian and U.S. College Students

Differences between Ghanaian (n = 465) and U.S. (n = 425) college students on the Hopkins Symptom Checklist‐25 (HSCL‐25; Mollica, Wyshak, de Marneffe, Khuon, & Lavelle, 1987 ) were examined. Compared with their U.S. counterparts, Ghanaians reported less general distress related to anxiety and depression, more anxiety‐specific distress, and no differences in depression‐specific distress. A multidimensional approach may be most appropriate in HSCL‐25 screening for symptoms of anxiety and depression. Se examinaron las diferencias entre estudiantes universitarios ghaneses (n = 465) y estadounidenses (n = 425) en el Listado de Síntomas de Hopkins‐25 (HSCL‐25, por sus siglas en inglés; Mollica, Wyshak, de Marneffe, Khuon, & Lavelle, 1987 ). Comparados con sus homólogos estadounidenses, los ghaneses comunicaron un menor sufrimiento general relacionado con la ansiedad y depresión, un mayor sufrimiento específico relacionado con la ansiedad, y no hubo diferencias en el sufrimiento específico relacionado con la depresión. Un enfoque multidimensional puede ser el más apropiado en el chequeo de HSCL‐25 para síntomas de ansiedad y depresión.     

Preferences versus strategies as explanations for culture-specific behavior

In this article, we present a new framework for interpreting cultural differences in behavior -- what we call the institutional approach. In this framework, individuals' behaviors are conceptualized as strategies adapted to various incentive structures. Cultural differences in behavior are thus viewed as differences in the default adaptive strategies that individuals come to rely on in unclear situations. Through two studies, we demonstrate that the East Asian "preference" for conformity is actually a default strategy to avoid accrual of negative reputation. When the possibility for negative evaluations in a given situation was clearly defined, cultural differences in the tendency for uniqueness disappeared. This approach carries important implications to psychologists who interpret cultural differences in behavior in terms of preferences, and can serve as a common framework branching out toward other disciplines in the social sciences.     

Implications of naturalistic use of pharmacotherapy in CBT treatment for panic disorder

This study examined naturalistic medication use and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment outcomes in 105 patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for panic disorder (PD), assessed by structured clinical interview. The association between pre- and post-treatment use of SSRIs, benzodiazepines (BZs), and any anti-anxiety or anti-depressant (A/D) medication were investigated for three indicators of treatment outcome (PD severity, presence of agoraphobia (AG), anxiety sensitivity) at post-treatment and 6-month follow-up. Controlling for pre-treatment severity, pre-treatment SSRI use was associated with worse outcomes for AG (p=.04) and anxiety sensitivity (p=.047); post-treatment SSRI use was associated with delayed improvements in PD severity (p=.05). Pre-treatment use of A/D was associated with poorer PD severity outcomes (p=.04). Post-treatment use of A/D was associated with higher anxiety sensitivity scores across post-treatment and 6-month follow-up (p=.03). BZ use was not associated with significantly worse outcomes. However, there was a decrease in the number of patients using BZs from pre-treatment to post-treatment (p=.06) and follow-up (p=.006). In conclusion, controlling for pre-treatment severity, pre- and post-treatment use of SSRIs and A/D was associated with poorer outcomes, particularly for PD severity and anxiety sensitivity.     

The use of PowerPoint shareware for making Jeopardy!--type games in the teaching of psychology

We describe the use of readily available templates to create a Jeopardy!--type game using PowerPoint slides suitable for psychology courses. The templates can accommodate information from any psychology class and can easily be used to incorporate languages other than English. A major limitation of the templates is that they are only available as shareware on internet sites and the links to such sites can be unreliable. To avoid this problem we present our own template. Differences between the shareware and our own program are noted, as are ways to use the game to stimulate interest in psychology.     

Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: Cross-linguistic evidence

Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.     

Efficient statistics, common currencies and the problem of reward-harvesting

The mammalian brain is equipped with reward-harvesting mechanisms that efficiently categorize and value the behavioral choices that lead to rewards necessary for survival. In this context, 'efficiency' embodies the idea of achieving maximum returns for minimal energetic investments and places a premium on how an animal represents its available options. But the capacity to efficiently represent choices is a profoundly difficult problem because representations for behavioral choice depend intimately on the statistics of information arriving not just from the sensory world and but also from within the creature itself. Any complete account of decision-making in mammals must efficiently connect the internal needs to the perceptual apparatus available to a creature moment-to-moment.     

Legal abortion worldwide: incidence and recent trends

CONTEXT: Information on abortion levels and trends can inform research and policies affecting maternal and reproductive health, but the incidence of legal abortion has not been assessed in nearly a decade. METHODS: Statistics on legal abortions in 2003 were compiled for 60 countries in which the procedure is broadly legal, and trends were assessed where possible. Data sources included published and unpublished reports from official national reporting systems, questionnaires sent to government agencies and nationally representative population surveys. The completeness of country estimates was assessed by officials involved in data collection and by in-country and regional experts. RESULTS: In recent years, more countries experienced a decline in legal abortion rates than an increase, among those for which statistics are complete and trend data are available. The most dramatic declines were in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where rates remained among the highest in the world. The highest estimated levels were in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, where surveys indicate that women will have close to three abortions each on average in their lifetimes. The U.S. abortion rate dropped by 8% between 1996 and 2003, but remained higher than rates in many Northern and Western European countries. Rates increased in the Netherlands and New Zealand. The official abortion rate declined by 21% over seven years in China, which accounted for a third of the world's legal abortions in 1996. Trends in the abortion rate differed across age-groups in some countries. CONCLUSIONS: The abortion rate varies widely across the countries in which legal abortion is generally available and has declined in many countries since the mid-1990s.     

Hinge versus twist: the effects of 'reference surfaces' and discontinuities on stereoscopic slant perception

Stereoscopic slant perception around a vertical axis (horizontal slant) is often found to be strongly attenuated relative to geometric prediction. Stereo slant is much greater, however, when an adjacent surface, stereoscopically in the frontal plane, is added. This slant enhancement is often attributed to the presence of a 'reference surface' or to a spatial change in the disparity gradient (introducing second and higher derivatives of disparity). Gillam, Chambers, and Russo (1988 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 14 163-175) questioned the role of these factors in that placement of the frontal-plane surface in a direction collinear with the slant axis (twist configuration) sharply reduced latency for perceiving slant whereas placing the same surface in a direction orthogonal to the slant axis (hinge configuration) had little effect. We here confirm these findings for slant magnitude, showing a striking advantage for twist over hinge configurations. We also examined contrast slant measured on the frontal-plane surface in the hinge and twist configurations. Under conditions where test and inducer surfaces have centres at the same depth for twist and hinge, we found that twist configurations produced strong negative slant contrast, while hinge configurations produced significant positive contrast or slant assimilation. We conclude that stereo slant and contrast effects for neighbouring surfaces can only be understood from the patterns and gradients of step disparities present. It is not adequate to consider the second surface merely as a reference slant for the first or as having its effect via a spatial change in the disparity gradient.